CHARTING THE UNCHARTED: A CORPUS ANALYSIS OF NEWSPAPER ADVERTISEMENTS BY INTERNATIONAL COMPANIES IN THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC OF IRAN

National, cultural and religious differences place restrictions upon international corporations seeking to advertise their products in foreign countries. Getting to know the demographic and the socio-political atmosphere of the target country could greatly improve the success rate of an advertising campaign. The present study seeks to investigate the various language strategies employed by a number of international companies advertising their products in Iranian newspapers. The focus of the analysis is on the use of language. For this purpose a corpus of newspaper advertisements by foreign companies was compiled. The study analyzed the language and script used in introducing company names, slogans and product descriptions. The results showed that different approaches (e.g., in translation and/or use of English/Arabic alphabet) are adopted by companies based on a number of determining variables which are discussed in our article.